Early this year, government researchers announced a grim milestone in America's overdose crisis. Between June 2020 and June 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic raged across the country, a record 101,263 people are believed to have died by drug overdose — nearly 21 percent more than in the previous 12 months. Sadly, overdose rates have been escalating for decades now. As recently as 1999, there were just under 17,000 annual deaths.
Throughout this disaster, the news media and policymakers have typically relied on a simple narrative: The crisis was caused by the widespread over-prescription of opioids, so therefore reducing the medical supply via law enforcement will solve it. And by the supply metric alone, they've succeeded: Since 2011, the total amount of opioids prescribed has fallen by more than half.
